Posted
by
timothy
on Thursday September 22, 2011 @11:31AM
from the gossips-you-mean dept.

MrCrassic writes "Looks like HP needed yet another remodeling, as they are tapping Meg Whitman to take Leo Apotheker's chair by this afternoon. From the All Things D article: 'Former eBay CEO Meg Whitman is poised to be named CEO of Hewlett-Packard later today after the markets are closed, said multiple sources close to the situation. The full board of HP, which is meeting today in Silicon Valley, has not officially voted on move and the situation could certainly change, but sources said it is nearly a done deal.' Cringely got this one right."

Actually, they've made so many bonehead moves over the last decade that I become convinced that the whole company is some sort of Producers-esque scam and the board is intentionally trying to crash it. Appointing Meg Whitman, who was notorious at eBay, pretty much confirms my suspicion. If Rod Blagojevich wasn't facing prison time, they probably would have appointed him. Hell, they still might.

Next up is putting Lindsey Lohan in charge of marketing and launching the HP Goliath, they'll tout as the "World's

You know, this is why I need to land me that first CEO job. It seems that no matter how badly you fuck up, no matter how many pooches you screw, no matter how toxic you are to shareholder assets or confidence, and no matter how much of a buffoon you make of yourself, as long as you've been a CEO, you will always get hired.

I work for a company that supports other companies, so I get to see a lot. I've seen a few people succeed on merit. I've seen a lot more succeed on relationships. I've seen a wife hired as a technical team lead. Problem was, she literally knew nothing about anything. I mean, she couldn't even type. One of the junior engineers was assigned to "assist" her. She got all the title, credit, and salary. He took all the blame. She took her string of "successes" and moved on to a higher management position, having established her technical skills. He got saddled with a lousy reputation for screwups and had to start over at a different company. We got called in to put out the fires and clean up the messes and billed them like there was no tomorrow, so we kept rooting for the trophy wife.

I could also tell you about the son of a company president who destroyed a network, had his Dad call us, and then got all kinds of kudos for a brilliant job recovering and redesigning the company's infrastructure during a crisis. No one ever asked what caused the crisis, of course.

Like I said, we're "hired guns," and we get paid, so we're happy. But my college delusions of meritocracy and the rewards of hard work and skill have not survived contact with the real world.:-)

My first job out of college, the company did a "how things work around here" lunch talk where they explained that they billed most of us out at $125/hour, and then went into some handwavy benefits-taxes-downtime analysis and concluded that for the company to be making a profit they needed to be billing us at about three times our hourly rate. I was perfectly willing to accept that. What I struggled with was the difference between their profit point ($40/hour) and my salary ($20/hour) weren't even remotely c

It's an exclusive club that won't just anyone in - kind of like an aristocracy. Why, no one really thinks we're upwardly mobile in the US, do they?

Yeah, some people actually think that an American hippy college dropout who's big ambition is to visit India on a quest for spiritual enlightenment could "grow up" and become the CEO of the world's largest (briefly) corporation. I have no idea why anyone would think something like that is possible.

That's the lottery ticket mentality. For some reason people have no problem spotting it among inner-city youths neglecting their schooling in the hopes of becoming an NBA star - yet they're blind to the same syndrome among wanna-be plumbers who are just sure they'll be running a big prosperous business one day and want to slash taxes right now, just in case.

The problem with your argument is that there are far more self employed millionaires. Replace "NBA star" with "doctor" and the flaw should start to become apparent. Upward mobility exists.

"Who is the prototypical American millionaire?... self-employed people make up less than 20 percent of the workers in America but account for two-thirds of the millionaires. Also, three out of four of us who are self-employed consider ourselves to be entrepreneurs. Most of the others are self-employed professionals, su

I couldn't follow the link without a subscription. But anyways, we are talking about different classes of income.

It's meaningless to say "80% of millionares are first-generation" because $1M in 1980 is equivalent to $2.6M now. If you start retirement with $1M in the bank right now and a 3.5% withdrawl rate (which is reasonable), you'll only be taking out $35K/year to live on!

Runaway wealth accrual is not caused by people who have accumulated $1M during a career; we're talking about people who get ten times that much every year even when the business fails. [mint.com] The lowest of the top 5 hedge fund managers in 2010 made $1.4 billion, which is obviously 1,400 times as much, in a single year, as the entrepreneurs and professional to which you refer accumulated over the course of a career. Doing the math, that's the same as equating somebody who makes $100,000 per year with somebody else who has a net worth of $71. Are the people I'm talking about reallythousands of times more productive than the people you're talking about?

I apologize. I don't know how I got in the first time. When I repeat my google search and follow the link I too get the paywall.

But anyways, we are talking about different classes of income. It's meaningless to say "80% of millionares are first-generation" because $1M in 1980 is equivalent to $2.6M now. If you start retirement with $1M in the bank right now and a 3.5% withdrawl rate (which is reasonable), you'll only be taking out $35K/year to live on!

If you are retired then you probably have already paid off a mortgage and have fewer expenses. $35K may not be so bad, especially when augmented by social security.

That said, I get your point. However the regrettably paywalled article also said that about 14% (IIRC) of the self employed are making $500K or more a year. I think the notions that there is no upward mobility and tha

It's all who you know. It's an exclusive club that won't just anyone in - kind of like an aristocracy.

Why, no one really thinks we're upwardly mobile in the US, do they?

If you think that you can be smart, work hard, and show ambition and get to that level, well, I have a lottery ticket from Nigeria that'll pay millions of dollars and all you have to do is send me $5,000 for fees and bribes and you can have the ticket because if I cash it in, I'll lose my spot as the next king.

It would be nice if companies would promote people on the basis of having at least some inkling of experience in what they're managing. I can't tell you how many "project managers" I've worked for that could never program their way out of a paper bag, and therefore have no sense of scheduling. I got an MBA so that I could use my experience in development to move up *just one* level in an IT organization. But no. No amount of relevant experience and credentials were enough to break the glass ceiling. Th

CEOs are kind of like movie directors. You're going to spend $100,000,000 on a movie, so do you hire the guy who's made a string of flops but also made one movie which made $1,000,000,000 profit, or do you hire the new guy who's never made a movie? If you hire director A and he screws up, you pass the buck onto them, whereas if you hire director B and he screws up, you take the blame.

We live in a society where leaders have been replaced with MBAs and empty-headed politicos who look good on camera, and rule number one is 'Pass The Buck!'. Once you realise that, most of the seemingly insane behaviour of modern 'leaders' makes perfect sense.

We live in a society where leaders have been replaced with MBAs and empty-headed politicos who look good on camera, and rule number one is 'Pass The Buck!'. Once you realise that, most of the seemingly insane behaviour of modern 'leaders' makes perfect sense.

Actually, the MBA no longer matters anymore to get into the country club. In a recent showing of "I Almost Got Away With It", a con man with only a GED read a few books on finance, learned some lingo and forged a resume and credentials to become CFO of a medium sized company. Had he not embezzled from them, he would have been kept on, as the CEO said he was one of the best CFO's they've ever had!

Well, creating shareholder value is easy. Just fire everyone you can, close as many departments as possible, collect your bonuses and leave the company before shit hits the fan. Business today is all about huge short-term profits.

Even a moron can do that. What is really, really hard is to get all the connections and friends that will land you on a job like this.

Wait, the moron who bought Skype - and didn't bother to check to see if she was getting the patents - is going to somehow turn HP around?

Yeah. Right.

Meg Witless could barely run a taco stand, let alone HP. She made Carly Failorina look competent. eBay was a great idea - which she had nothing to do with - and Meg rode that idea along with the dot com boom to "success". Once the boom ended, so did eBay's growth. It's been pretty much stagnant since.

The only smart move eBay has made in the past decade or so was buying PayPal, and that was a no-brainer everybody and his brother suggested eBay do. Their attempt to become another Amazon has only succeeded in devaluing their core auction business.

No, they bought it for $3.1B, took a $1.4B impairment charge, then sold 70% of the company for $2B. The 30% they retained was part of the $8.5B deal so in the end they made ~$-100M minus any acretive value that Skype added to the bottom line while it was wholly owned (very little I'm sure).

Building a website based company is completely different from running a hardware company. Witness Carly Fiorina's tenure for an example of how that goes, and even she was kind of selling hardware at Lucent. Ebay had no supply chain to deal with, HP is nothing BUT supply chain. Also, let's not forget that the explosive growth of eBay was one of these right place right idea right time once in a lifetime things.

Frankly, if I were her, I'd think long and hard before attaching my name to the trainwreck that is HP.

It all depends on what they want her to do. Oversee development, manufacturing, logistics and retailing of hi tech consumer products for a global market? Maybe she should think about it carefully. However if they want her to auction off the assets of HP then maybe she wouldn't need to think about it as much.

If there are any parts [slashdot.org] left to auction by the time she gets moved into her corner office.

Leo must have seen this one coming [cringely.com]. In many companies, its common practice to have a security guard escort employees on their way out to make sure they don't sabotage something. Why not in this case?

Bingo. If they are looking for someone to fill in for a few months in the CEO chair while they look for a long term replacement, I could see Whitman doing that. She knows what it's like to be CEO of a big company and while she has little enterprise experience she could keep the parts moving for a while without blowing things up. Big companies generally can operate on autopilot for quite a while regardless of who is the person in the corner office.

Because that's the only metric to go on, right? To say nothing of the fact that she squandered $2.5 billion on Skype, she oversaw upheaval of the rules that led to mass exoduses away from eBay, and really just kinda rode the dot com boom up to the top.

Frankly, if I were her, I'd think long and hard before attaching my name to the trainwreck that is HP.

Actually there is minimal risk. HP is currently such a mess that if it fails on her watch many would accept the notion that it was inevitable, that HP was beyond the point of no return. However if she turns it around she may be viewed in a manner "comparable" to Steve Jobs 2.0 at Apple. As an investor may say, there is far more potential upside than there is potential downside.

Fuck, if anything, HP needs a completely product focused CEO. Forget the sales, leave that to the President or one of the VPs. HP needs a CEO that is just going to focus on getting new, innovative, desirable product, and getting it out the door.

Brand is everything if you think about it. A brand is just the attributes that people use to describe your product or company. If you sell shitty product, then you'll have a brand of shitty quality products. Let's be honest, most consumers don't understand technology and even fewer can predict what's going to be the next big thing in tech, so consumers use brand to differentiate products and reduce selection complexity. They assume that the higher the price the better the quality, be damned if it doesn't wo

The vast majority of HP's revenue comes from enterprise markets, which Meg Whitman has zero experience with. Any experience she might have had dealing with end users kind of got a bit less important when HP decided to ambiguously throw the PC division under the bus. HP makes both eBay and Dreamworks look like tiny, insignificant companies. And eBay already had pretty much a monopoly in online auctions since day one; all she did there was not screw it up. (She also bought PayPal, which turned out well, and Skype, which didn't.) By the time she left eBay, as a mature company, it was adrift with no path to growth. HP is already a mature company and any growth is going to have to come the hard way, which she doesn't have any experience with.

I'm not saying she can't pull it off, just that she has no background in HP's primary markets to help her along.

And it wasn't Leo that broke HP. That started with Carly, continued with Chainsaw Mark, and we simply have no idea what would have happened with Leo, since he hasn't had the job that long.

OK, I just have to jump in here. CEO's, on the scale of businesses like HP, don't deal with end-users, enterprise or otherwise. They don't need "shop floor" experience, though that never hurts. They certainly don't need experience in this or that product line. What they do need, in spades, is the ability to pick the right people to work immediately under them. Product strategy isn't set in a vacuum by CEO fiat. HP's recent missteps positively reek of a cadre of VP's who are little more than "yes men", toadies who are unwilling to point out the emperor's nudity, or worse, who lack the chops to run their divisions. That HP missed so badly on their table execution demonstrates a failing far deeper than the myopic CEO who green-lighted a major product without realizing the gaping hole in it (no apps).

Maybe Meg can turn that around. First sign that she can will be a major shakeup at the VP level.

OK, I just have to jump in here. CEO's, on the scale of businesses like HP, don't deal with end-users, enterprise or otherwise. They don't need "shop floor" experience, though that never hurts. They certainly don't need experience in this or that product line. What they do need, in spades, is the ability to pick the right people to work immediately under them. Product strategy isn't set in a vacuum by CEO fiat. Actually, since what Leo did was try and remake HP as SAP, it does sort of happen by CEO fiat. A

Firstly, the CEO of a company like HP deals with C-level executives of companies they are trying to sell many millions of dollars of gear and services to all the time. Meeting with client upper management is one of the bedrocks of the CEO's job with companies that sell to other large companies. In fact, I'd say that the CEO's of enterprise companies have MORE interaction with their customers than a company like eBay.

No, they don't absolutely have to have "shop floor" experience, knowledge of the industry,

Lou Gerstner was a Snack Food and Cigarette Guy. He was brought in from the outside to run a flailing technology giant. (And one in the same market position; IBM was the #1 in Revenue IT company then, and that's where HP is now.) IBM, too, was on the verge of splitting up into smaller pieces.

eBay was a fast-growing company with a near-monopoly in their market. HP is a mature giant that is flailing for direction and leadership.

Somebody whose major skill is "getting out of the way" is going to ride HP into pathetic oblivion, joining other once-great IT companies like DEC. (Which, incidentally, HP currently owns the remains of.) HP needs major change and a leadership infusion and it needs it last year.

I'm not sure about this, yes ebay is amazing success but for who? It is no longer an online garage sale where individuals can easily sell things, it is now dominated by dealers with buy-it-now. I used to do a lot shopping on ebay (unique items whether it be Gina Lollobrigida photos or 2-way radio and accessories) when many sellers were simply people with things they want to unload. Nowadays it's all fulltime sellers listing same ol' same ol' over and ove

I miss the old ebay where unique one-of-a-kind items can be found. Maybe they still exist but swamped with too much crap.

Ditto. I used to buy a lot from ebay auctions and got some good deals and weird stuff that I'd never have found elsewhere; I've hardly bought anything from them since they became just another storefront site a few years ago.

Based on most committees, the clear alternative is to go to the captain and order him to get busy rearranging the deck chairs.

(Interestingly, on the actual Titanic, Edward Smith and his officers did what was probably the right thing with their boss: did their best to keep him busy with useless stuff, and on one occasion told him off so they could get back to work)

Hopefully Meg will work out well for HP... but the revolving door CEO the last couple of years is pretty sad - gotta wonder about the Board and the whole pretexting scandal by Chairwoman Dunn was pathetic... Hewlett and Packard must be rolling in their graves over all the drama at HP.

So HP, fresh on the heels of several disastrous CEO tenures, one of which happened to include a certain would-be politician running the company virtually into the ground, decides that hey it's time for a fresh attitude, let's find another failed female politician to come set things straight... Is there ANYONE at HP with a memory that goes back more than 5 minutes?

So HP, fresh on the heels of several disastrous CEO tenures, one of which happened to include a certain would-be politician running the company virtually into the ground, decides that hey it's time for a fresh attitude, let's find another failed female politician to come set things straight... Is there ANYONE at HP with a memory that goes back more than 5 minutes?

Hey, I bet Michelle Bachmann is about to be available, after running her train-wreck of a presidential campaign into the ground. She should fit right in at HP. Maybe she can figure out a way to sell tablets for less than $100 a pop. Oh, wait...

The entire concept that "Management" is a core discipline that someone can learn and then they can run _any_ type of company, even with no understanding of it whatsoever is one of the worst things to have come out of the 20th century, and looking at that century, thats really saying something.

HP sells ink, inkjet printers, laser printers, large scale printers and plotters, scanners, copiers, high end costs-more-than-a-porsche-copiers, servers, network equipment, big iron servers, SANs, and medical imaging devices. They're not in the same category as SGI or DEC as their product line is still broad.

Come to think of it, how is HP doing in those areas. Most of us are damning them for a revolving CEO and their PC madness. However, if the rest of their product line is holding their own, then maybe there's more to HP management than we've been telling ourselves.

That said, their printers have gone downhill. No doubt to keep up with the...what's Jones in Chinese...Wangs. Their mid-range line is built to last until the product warranty expires, but not beyond.

One of the problems with this strategy on failing companies is that the smart people realize early that the company is going down and get out. This accelerates the death spiral as only the deadweight remains, but also makes it difficult for someone internally to step up and save the company since anybody who could have done that left already. This is why failing companies need people from the outside to save them.

If all the competent workers have already left, no CEO would be able to save the company because there's nobody left to actually get things done.If the company is full of good workers, the only thing that will make them leave is bad management decisions.

They give a shit. It's not just a job. Steve Jobs came back aboard Apple with a One Dollar salary and no golden parachute. When he stepped down as CEO, Tim Cook didn't get a golden parachute either (he's gotta work for it for 10 years if he wants to be vested in a dime of stock). That's the way it should be done.

I defy anyone to find an MBA gun-for-hire that give a shit if a company fails or not, especially if there's a golden-parachu

He:* has top-notch understanding of what it takes to build a PC* has a prior relationship to HP* co-founded a highly successful technology company* is not a complete power-hungry jerk* knows better than anyone else how to identify "Steve Jobs types"

Of course, there's one problem: He has way too much sense to take the job.

According to Wikipedia:
As Hasbro's Playskool Division General Manager, she oversaw global management and marketing of two children's brands, Playskool and Mr. Potato Head starting in January 1997. She also imported the UK's children's television show Teletubbies into the U.S.[17]

NOT ONLY Mr. Potato Head, BUT teletubbies too!!

I can not think of someone better qualified to bring HP out of it's nose dive... than the manager of Mr. Potato Head's manager.
Clear sailing for HP

You can use your newly released HP 12c Anniversary Edition (or 15c Limited Edition) to calculate how much stock you want to sell and/or short. Hopefully the company doesn't tank and take the calculator division with it before selling it off.

It is a testament to the employees resourcefulness that HP is still as strong as it is after this remarkable serial abuse by incompetent top management. Not sure how much more abuse the company can take.

Why is American business dying? Because our stinking rich business leaders are now a bunch of incestuousness nepotistic numb-nuts. Hiring Meg Whitman is such a bad idea that I half expect Mr. Packard himself to rise up out the grave and eat the board's brains (as little as they have between them).

HP is all but dead. Tablets are going to eat PC and printer sales and that will be that.

But what bothers me most is that HP is taking webOS, arguably the best platform out there, down with it.

From what I've read, Whitman is a placeholder. She's a director and is going to step in and run things until they find a permanent CEO.

If they consider making her permanent...Whitman is the wrong person for the job. She spent 30 years in consumer tech and HP is trying to focus on enterprise IT. Unless they plan to ditch that and do a 180-degree change and go back to PCs, tablets, and phones, she's a bad fit.

She is also an idiot. eBay buying Skype was one of the dumbest moves of all time.

If I was an HP shareholder, right about now my first thoughts wouldn't be "should we fire the CEO"... it would be more along the lines of "this fucking board has got to go..."

For chrissakes, we're talking about one of THE great Silicon Valley companies here, a company whose printer line alone still commands the industry. It's like the entire leadership has gone completely insane.

The board of directors is a bunch of CEO cronies (ask yourself why Meg Whitman is even on the board in the first place, does she own 5%+ of the stock? Does she have a vested interest in the company succeeding or just padding her resume for another failed political bid?). Oh there are one or two actual shareholders on the board but not with the voting power to actually right this ship. The board of directors of most of the fortune 500 are populated by other CEO's. That's the demise of American capitalism. You wonder why CEO salaries have increased at about 100% a year and why golden parachutes exist? This is why.

Personally I blame mutual funds that own 75% of these companies and take no vested interest in the company or it's management.